


Tick

by CrumblingAsh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Flash Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:27:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni is built out of skips and silences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tick

* * *

 

“So, are you going to leave, or what?”

Bruce looks up from where he’s (carefully, very carefully) sprawled out on the couch tossed so randomly in the lab, away from the tablet of science he hadn’t really been reading anyway. Toni isn’t facing him, but she’s sizing him up out of the corner of her eye, the ratchet in her hand unmoving, hip popped to the opposite side of his direction. Covered in grease and day-old sweat, the hair she insists on dying black messily knotted at the base of her neck still tangles in her eyes. She stands like someone who is used to not being seen, to being misinterpreted, expecting it.

 “’Cause I’ve got a jet. With fuel. It can take you…” she waves the hand with ratchet, and still doesn’t look directly at him. “Places.”

The thing is, when you live a hunted life, you learn to read your hunters. You learn to read everyone. You watch for cues, for stiffness, for that certain tick that gives away a comrade in the war of life as an enemy or an ally. And Bruce has been able to read Natasha Antonia Stark from the moment she shook his hand with her paparazzi smile, too fucking easily.

After a beat (she really does hate it when he’s quiet), she turns her head toward him, arching an eyebrow, but her face is blank, jaw clenched, and Bruce just watches. Because you learn to read your hunters, and you learn to listen to more than just what you can hear – what’s skipped, what’s silent, what hangs in the air on the whisper of a breath forgotten.

Toni is built out of skips and silences.

He chooses his words carefully and says them just as such, shrugs like they mean what they say. “New York’s growing on me.”

Her shoulders relax in the smile that doesn't cross her face.


End file.
